Targeted Infusion Grant: Development of a Virtual and Augmented Reality Laboratory for Research and Education at Tennessee State University

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The Tennessee State University (TSU) Targeted Infusion Project's state-of-the-art Virtual and Augmented Reality (VAR) Research and Educational Laboratory enhances the Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering curriculum and increases mentored research opportunities for undergraduate students. Deploying VAR as a research and educational vehicle, this laboratory will immerse students in actual engineering-design challenges. The critical demand for modeling, analyzing, and visualizing complex multidimensional data sets creates a need to offer this VAR initiative for training students, and integrate advanced engineering tools in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering to relevant industrial applications and research at TSU. Though VAR has been identified as one of the fourteen grand challenges of engineering by the National Academy of Engineering, unpublished institutional data from recent alumni (1999-2009) reveal no TSU graduates applied to VAR graduate programs or were employed by industries specializing in VAR technologies. This pattern contributes to the under-representation of African Americans in the VAR workforce and in competitive VAR graduate programs. The objectives of this proposal are to: 1) Develop a Virtual and Augmented Reality Laboratory for academic training to integrate research and educational modules in the Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering programs; 2) Prepare globally competitive engineers by equipping TSU's engineering students with knowledge and understanding of critical engineering concepts and VAR technologies which are required to solve practical engineering design challenges in tomorrow's workforce and competitive graduate engineering programs; and 3) Enhance infrastructure and promote sustainability by increasing the synergy with TSU's two federally funded successful programs (HBCU-UP Implementation and LS-TLSAMP) which are focused on STEM student achievement.